stardust and whispers of old things
by ncfan
Summary: His mother was considered unusual to have named an heir when both of her children were still so young. However, there was a reason for everything the line of Caloris did, and this was no exception.


[CN: Prejudice against Lumens]

I own nothing.

* * *

His mother, Eleonora, was considered unusual, to have named an heir when both of her children were still so young. The majority of nobles with more than one child typically waited until their children were older to name an heir. When they were older, their parents would have a better idea of what each child was capable of and if they were up to the challenge of governing over a county or a duchy. There were some who, if they lived that long, would wait until some of their children were married, and leave their title to one who seemed unlikely to wed, so at least they would be taken care of.

However, there was a reason for everything the line of Caloris did, no matter how odd it might look to outsiders. This was no exception.

Joslyn vividly remembered the first time his mother took him down below their ancestral home, to the old cellar that only she held the key to. He was seven, and as he followed after her down the stairs, with only the bobbing lantern she held for light, he thought he was descending into another world entirely. Joslyn had always heard stories that fairies lived in great caverns underground. He only half-believed in fairies, but as he traversed the cool, damp staircase, trailing his hand against the clammy wall, he could believe that they were passing into a more fantastical world.

What they came upon was not another world. They came to another door that only his mother had the key to, and Joslyn was ushered inside.

When Eleonora hung the lantern from a hook on the ceiling, Joslyn had an opportunity to look at the room and walk around it for the first time. The air was cool as it had been in the hall, and not as close and stifling as he would have expected from a room with no windows (Years later, Joslyn would discover the existence of the air shaft that ventilated the room). It was not a particularly large room, probably around the size of the drying house on the estate, but however small it was, its appearance made up for that.

The walls were painted with faded, peeling frescoes, the outlines of gold paint glinting in the lantern-light. Joslyn saw images of soldiers on horses, of fantastical sailing ships. He saw a mountain erupting with fire, a woman with long black hair breathing the stars into being, catching them in her hands and tossing them out into the cosmos. He saw a great beast with a thousand limbs rising above the surface of the ocean and flinched, every story he had ever been told about sea monsters flitting through his mind.

The wall opposite the door was devoted to a single painted image: that of another woman, similar to the other in appearance but somehow much more human-looking, holding her arms high above her head and clasping a sphere of light in her hands. Joslyn stared at her for what at the time felt like an eternity, mesmerized at something, though whether it was how remarkably lifelike the light she held looked or the proud, terrible expression on her face, he could not say.

Eventually, Joslyn began to look at the items spread out about the room. He saw a few coffers, all of ornate design, all very old-looking, and all shut and locked (And he wondered if his mother was the only one who had the key to these chests as well). There was a great wardrobe gathering dust, and a chest of drawers. There was also what looked like a floor-length mirror covered by a length of cloth.

"You must say nothing of this place to your father, nor to your brother," Eleonora told him sternly, kneeling on the floor in front of him, so that her skirt was covered in dust and her long red hair brushed the floor. "Do you understand me?"

Joslyn nodded. "Yes, Mother. But what _is _this place?" There was no hiding the curiosity in his voice. It might not have been the entrance to Fairyland, it might not have been a portal to the shadow-land or the gray and gloomy realms of the dead, but even young as he was, he understood that this room had to be important. There was no reason for his mother to hold the only key, no reason for it to be secret, no reason for Eleonora to bid him keep it secret, not if it wasn't something very important.

Her eyes glinted in the gloom, catlike and shining bright. "The heirs of Caloris have their duties, the same as any others. This is ours. I will teach you, for there is no one else left to know."

-0-0-0-

Nova was once governed over not only by a Lumen ruler, but by dukes and duchesses who were all Lumens. The key to the power of Nova's ruler was that all other Lumens in the domain subjected themselves to the ruler's will, willingly sharing control of their magic with the ruler. Anyone who delved deep enough into the musty corners of the histories could discover this—it was not forbidden knowledge. But Joslyn learned it younger than most, and was taught the significance of it where few others would be.

His mother taught him all there was to know of magic and the ways it could spark cataclysms and terror, for this was the legacy of the line of Caloris, to know of magic and all its dangers. The room that Eleonora had taken her oldest son to was a treasury of sorts, a house for artifacts and old things imbued with a Lumen's power. In the coffers there were books of spells, jars filled with gleaming stones used in charms and rituals and bottles filled with vibrant liquids used as ingredients in potions and magical poisons and a thousand other things besides. There was a bolt of cloth whose previous cuttings had killed its wearers when made into clothing, a hand mirror used by a Borealan queen to stop an army in its tracks. A lantern that if lit with blue flame would never go out (but would also draw evil spirits the way flame drew moths), a volume taken from the royal library that detailed the nature of King Latimer's policy of "gathering light."

The wardrobe was filled with articles of clothing rumored to gift the wearer with some great power or with intelligence or beauty or some other trait; the chest of drawers contained pieces of jewelry supposed to have the same effect. But the floor-length mirror's use remained a mystery—Joslyn's mother would not say what it was for, only to tell him to never remove the cloth covering it—and the wardrobe and chest of drawers held more besides. The wardrobe served as the resting place for enchanted swords and spears and knives and bows, the weapons of great kings and queens of old. Some of the jewelry in the chest of drawers was supposed to curse its wearers or give the wearer great sight or hearing, and in the chest there was a box containing a hunk of silvery metal that was ever-warm and pulsated at a human touch.

Theses were all the creations of Lumens and their magic, or normal objects saturated with a Lumen's magic. They had been used for purposes both good and ill, Eleonora counseled her son, but ultimately they became instruments of destruction and horror, no matter the user's initial intentions.

"How?"

"Listen, and I will tell you."

Over time, over weeks and months of stolen minutes and hours in that secret room, she told Joslyn all that she knew, all that she had been taught as a child growing to womanhood. He learned the lore of his line in that quiet, gloomy room, Eleonora's voice echoing on the walls as he paced about, unable to shake his sense of wonder at his surroundings.

Joslyn learned of the purported origins of magic. He learned of tales whispered to him by his mother, where it was said that the first Lumen caught stardust in a sieve and mixed it with blood and molten silver to make her crystal.

Whether or not it was true, magic originated in Borealis, where the first Lumens arose and twisted the continent to conjure a lush empire out of the dust. He learned of the eventual collapse of the Borealan empire when the Lumens of that land turned on one another, and how that green, verdant land in the north turned back into the barren desert it had once been, but now utterly incapable of supporting life. The Borealans eked out a meager living on the coastlines, and the only things that lived in the interior of the continent now were malevolent spirits of dust and wind.

"That is what magic will wreak when a great multitude of Lumens war against each other. But there is more yet for you to learn."

Eleonora told him of how the refugee Lumens of Borealis had sailed south to Arcadia in their gigantic, fantastical iron sailing ships, and had settled in Nova. The power and might of the infant Novan Empire exploded with the presence of theses Lumens, who had brought with them a multitude of Lumen crystals, which had been presented to the ruler of Nova, her nobility, and her priestly class.

Nova had not started out with a force of Lumens that consisted solely of the royal and ducal lines. Joslyn had never heard anything of the sort from his tutors, had in fact heard the contrary from them. He raised his eyebrows, frankly more inclined to believe his tutors, but Eleonora smirked and wagged her finger at him. "Oh, the official histories will tell you a number of things that aren't true. Those who write the histories and control what goes into them have changed the official line over the centuries. History is not set in stone, my son."

These Lumens were concentrated on the Old Capital on the shores of Kathre Lake, in southern Caloris. "In the Old Forest?" Joslyn blurted out, eyes wide. He had heard stories of the Old Forest and the abandoned palace within for as long as he could remember; it was the same for every child in Caloris. "How did they get past all the monsters?"

"Oh, sweetheart!" Eleonora exclaimed, shaking her head so vigorously that her loose hair seemed momentarily to catch fire in the lantern light. "Have you paid so little attention to the stories you've been told and what your tutors teach you? Even the history books record this story."

At that, Joslyn fell silent, abashed, and she continued her tales.

When powerful magics interact, certain _things _are attracted to it. Supernatural creatures and monsters were attracted to the powerful magic of the Lumens of Nova, and those Lumens used this to their advantage. They captured the monsters and took them back to the Old Capital, to be studied and to be used as attack animals in battle against their enemies. But as Borealis had collapsed as the result of magic and arrogance, magic and arrogance proved to be the undoing of the Old Capital, and the old Novan Empire.

Inevitably, the captured monsters proved too strong for their captors and escaped. They killed all who could not escape and rendered the Old Capital and the forest surrounding it uninhabitable. There those creatures and their descendants lived to this very day, peering out between the trees upon the wider world, waiting for hapless travelers to wander inside.

Joslyn was taught all the names of the creatures drawn to magic, and marked them well.

Creeping shade.

Keythong.

Will-o'-the-wisp.

Wight.

Drude.

Myvern.

Glashtyn.

Hydra.

Kraken.

And then, there was the doomshadow.

"Nearly the entirety of the high nobility of Nova was wiped out during that time, including the Queen. It was only during that period, after the doomshadow, that the people of Nova first realized the dangers of magic. Becoming a Lumen was never outlawed, but only the royal line and the duchy of Ursul maintained active Lumens after the doomshadow was banished. As a preventative measure, all of the other Lumen crystals in Nova that could be found were destroyed." Eleonora narrowed her eyes. "Or so it is said."

Joslyn stared, mouth hanging slightly open, as Eleonora took what at first looked like a brooch out of her pocket. It was a blue gemstone surrounded by gold flower petals, but Joslyn had to look at it but once to know that it was no ordinary brooch, no ordinary jewel. His mother dropped the crystal into his hands, and like the hunk of metal he had seen when he came to this room for the first time, it pulsated gently in his hands.

Eleonora wrapped her hands around his. "This is our duty, Joslyn," she said, her voice low and fervent. "That is my crystal. When I die, it will become yours. You will keep it, and protect it, and pass it on to your heir when the time comes, but you will never use it.

"This is our duty, the legacy of the line of Caloris for the past two hundred years. To guard that which causes destruction, to keep it safe, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, to keep it secret at all costs. To know of magic, its costs and the great terror it brings, but never, ever use it.

"Power corrupts, my son, and there is no power more seductive, more destructive than this. It does not matter what your intentions are. You may have the best of intentions imaginable. But if you wield it, it will bring ruin down upon you. Do you understand?"

Joslyn nodded. "Yes, Mother." He felt the crystal pulsing in his hands and was almost able to imagine that it was a living thing he held. It was only a crystal, and such a small thing for the power and chaos it was capable of, but something so powerful ought to have had a consciousness of its own.

He never forgot.

-0-0-0-

The years passed. Joslyn learned all that he could of the lore of Nova, in preparation for that day when his mother's crystal and everything in that room down below the estate would be his, but mostly, they were quiet years.

He counted them in measures. Armand's growth spurts. The balmy, humid nights spent wandering the seaside in Caloris, remembering stories about mermaids and balls of green fire on the horizon at dusk and wondering if he would see either. The number of hot, sticky days traveling up to Mazomba to spend the spring and summer in his father's lands, swatting at gnats and mosquitoes that tried to suck him dry of blood and imagining them to be malicious spirits he could slay with a sword.

Skipping stones on the Cavalla while Armand poked about in the bulrushes looking for birds' nests and buried treasure. Standing at the outskirts of the Old Forest at dusk with his friends, each of them daring each other to venture within, but no one ever quite working up the nerve. The number of nights he woke up to hear through the wall the faint, jumbled sounds of his parents arguing, and wondering just long enough what they were arguing about for them to stop, and for him to barely remember it in the morning. The number of times his voice would crack and Maren the pretty maid would laugh before beckoning him behind the door of the drying house and bidding him be quiet, lest they be found. The number of times they parted without regret, until both lost interest and it did not even occur to Joslyn to ask why she had resigned her post and gone home, knowing that young girls here rarely stayed in such posts for more than a few years. (_Until later, when he found out why, and went racing to a house on the outskirts of town he had never seen, but that is another tale for another day._)

There was school as well, far from home in southern Kigal. Joslyn became fast friends with the Queen's younger child, Laurent, a boy his own age. They groaned over exams and essays together, Joslyn lamenting the length and Laurent the subject matter. He watched the Duchess of Hellas's daughter Brin make doe's eyes at an older girl named Elsbeth until she finally worked up the nerve to go speak to her, and learned to clear the library, courtyard, common room or wherever when the Duchess of Lillah's son Kevan, who was ready to start a fight at the drop of a hat, came into view.

Joslyn saw many people his own age there, more than he was used to, and there were many people at school whom he thought strange, with strange customs and strange manners, though they were all from the same domain. The students from Lillah especially seemed strange to Joslyn's eyes, as they carried with them vestiges of the culture of the Yeveh Nomads. But there were two girls at school who seemed more fit for the world of the fantastical past and Caloris's artifact hoard than the one they lived in.

One was Julianna of Ursul, the heir to the duchy as her older brother had been disinherited for unspecified reasons (And was now relying on his wife's family for support). The line of Ursul had been held as traitors for the past two hundred years, ever since the then-duke had refused to join in the defense of Nova against the doomshadow, and Julianna carried that stigma with her wherever she went, wearing it like a cloak. She walked with one foot in the world of magic and enchantments already, knowing more about spells and curses and poisons than anyone in school; everyone knew that Julianna would be the Lumen ruler of Ursul one day, but she already seemed a magician.

Brin seemed to think her very attractive (and Laurent joked about her proclivity for "older" women), but Joslyn couldn't see it himself, honesty. Granted, Julianna was a year up from him in school, so he didn't have that many classes with her, but what he did see of her was enough to form an impression of the older girl as cold, aloof and unfriendly, quick to give insult and slow to see even a need for apology. She had but one friend, and clung to her like a drowning sailor to driftwood.

That friend was Laurent's older sister, Crown Princess Fidelia.

Fidelia was another who would be a Lumen when the time came, but she seemed less like a person who had one foot in the world of magic and more like one composed of the stardust the first Lumen had used to make her crystal. She was kindly and personable (and very beautiful, and possessed of a voice like a nightingale, things Joslyn only became more and more acutely aware of as time wore on), and had a demeanor not unlike that of the temple priestesses, still and serene. Julianna had that stillness too; Joslyn knew that there were ways that Lumens could train their children to ready themselves to perform magic before a crystal came into their possession, and wondered if that was part of it.

Joslyn had been taught to distrust magic. He knew its terrible power, knew how Lumens weaved their magic spells and left a path of destruction in their wakes. His mother had told him so many stories that he would never be able to see magic as anything but a blood-soaked art. But everything he ever heard told him to become a Lumen and perform magic was the divine right of the royal line. The line of Ursul might be ostracized for practicing magic openly, but the ruler of Nova had every right, and it wasn't like they used it for a whole lot, anyways.

"I wish there were more Lumens in Nova."

As he came to know her better, Joslyn began to realize that Fidelia was often preoccupied with the idea of magic. She had been delighted to find out that one of her brother's friends had an interest in history and lore (both of which were often associated with magic), and as _they _grew closer, they often spoke of these things. They would wonder about the nature of mystical creatures they had never heard of before and debate the meaning of ambiguous passages in the histories. Fidelia had so many questions about the Old Forest that Joslyn sometimes felt overwhelmed trying to answer them. And sometimes, seeing her interest, he felt guilty at all the knowledge he possessed and could not share, but he kept to his duty and he kept his silence.

"Why do you say that?" Joslyn asked, looking at her out of half-shut eyes and wondering fleetingly if they'd be able to make it back to their dormitories on time, or if their dormitory monitors would come looking for them again. They had taken to sitting behind a large bush in the corner of the courtyard when they wanted to meet so they would have privacy, and it was easy to lose track of time in that secluded spot, but Joslyn could see purple streaks beginning to appear in the sky. But he shoved his vague worries aside. For a few more minutes alone with Fidelia he could take any sort of chastisement from his dormitory monitor.

She shrugged, scuffing at the ground with her foot. "It's just… It's just a sort of lonely feeling. There will be myself and Julianna, when we come into our inheritance. But any other Lumens in Nova live in hiding, so even if there are more than just the two of us, there may as well not be any more." Fidelia straightened and smiled at him, perhaps just a little half-heartedly. "I suppose the fact that there will only be two of us makes our being Lumens more important, but it really is a lonely feeling."

_My mother has a crystal. She's never bonded with it, but it does exist. _It was frightening to Joslyn, how close he came to actually saying that. There was Fidelia, confiding feelings of loneliness, and here he was, holding on to knowledge that could maybe ease her feelings of loneliness.

He would never become a Lumen. That was part of Joslyn's own responsibilities, to hold onto the Caloris crystal, keep it safe and away from prying eyes, but never become a Lumen himself. He would never tell Fidelia that this crystal existed, that there was a room on his mother's estate that contained artifacts that she had never dreamed of.

This was his duty, the duty that had been impressed upon him since he was a child, and to violate it would be to betray his ancestors for the past two hundred years. Every sense of his rebelled at the thought.

But the thought of her feelings of loneliness and isolation filled him with a guilt he could not name, a guilt so strong that Joslyn thought that letting one relatively harmless thing slip couldn't hurt. "Fidelia… There's a story I've heard about how the first Lumen made her crystal. Have you ever heard it?"

Fidelia's eyes lit up with curiosity, all feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction seeming to be forgotten. "No, I haven't. What does it say?"

"Well, the first Lumen was a peasant woman in Borealis." It was easy, retelling this story, easy to do it with no remorse, no guilt, easy to remember the wonder he had felt when he sat at his mother's feet and heard this story for the first time. It was pleasant to imagine Fidelia feeling that same sense of wonder, pleasant to spread some small measure of joy, whatever it might be. "She traveled to the highest mountain in that land, so high that its peak rent the night sky and the stars were so close that a traveler could reach out and touch the stars, if they wished…"

-0-0-0-

"We do not intermarry with the royal line."

That had been the content of the argument for the past half-hour, Eleonora stubbornly refusing to grant her blessing and Joslyn trying everything he could think of to make her budge, as the blood steadily rose in his face and the air in the sitting room seemed to crackle. Every protest that it would be good for the family, that it would strengthen ties with the crown, that he loved her and that was a lot more than could be said of most nobles who wed for expediency, they all failed to move her. Joslyn could hear Eleonora's objections starting to lose a bit of their obduracy, but still, she objected; still; she refused to give her blessing.

From her sitting place, gripping the cane she had needed ever since she broke her hip the past winter, Eleonora regarded him with a frown, staring piercingly at her son out of her shrewd blue eyes. "Oh, I agree that it would be a very good match, good for Caloris, but we _do not_ intermarry with the royal line."

"But Mother, why—"

"Hush, Joslyn." She cut him off abruptly, holding up a hand. "You are still very young, my son," Eleonora told him, her tone stern. "Princess Fidelia has made her intentions known, but you are seventeen years old. You need to think about what you're doing."

"I _have _thought about it!" Joslyn snapped. Why was she still refusing to give her blessing to the union? Fidelia had made her proposal a month ago; he had accepted. Queen Ladesh had given her blessing, and so had Joslyn's father. His mother, on the other hand, had refused, and had also refused to give any reason beyond "We do not intermarry with the royal line." If she had given him anything resembling an actual reason (asides from age; that was hedging, and Joslyn knew it), he would have understood; he still would have been angry, but he would have understood. But this…

Joslyn was startled to hear her sigh. Eleonora shook her head, making visible sandy hairs among the red he had never noticed before. "You want this dearly, don't you?" she asked quietly, and in turn answered her own question before Joslyn could even open his mouth. "Yes, I can see that you do." Eleonora smirked slightly. "It's written all over your face, my son. Alright, I will give my blessing to your marriage."

With that, it was as though someone had opened all the windows in the sitting room and let some fresh air in at last. Joslyn smiled, feeling a wave of relief wash over him. "Thank you, Mother."

Eleonora frowned again. "Don't thank me yet," she warned. "I will give my blessing to you and the princess, but I want you to ponder this question."

Her tone was heavy, and Joslyn paused, wondering what question his mother had in mind. "What do you mean?" he asked cautiously. _Why do I have the feeling that I'm not going to like this?_

She did not answer for a few moments, sitting there in silence with her eyes squeezed shut and her left hand clenched on her cane. Then, Eleonora opened her eyes. She stared at him for a long time with a very hard look in her eyes, and inquired, "At what point does secret-keeping become treason?"

_What?_ "I… I don't understand," Joslyn stammered, mind reeling with confusion.

Unfortunately, Eleonora did not seem to be in a sympathetic mood, for she plowed mercilessly on. "Take the duchy of Ursul. Two hundred years ago, Duke Augustus claimed that he had abstained from joining the defense of Nova against the doomshadow so that the magic and the teachings of the Lumens would be preserved." Eleonora snorted. "It was almost certainly a lie. Duke Augustus was far more interested in saving his own neck than he was in preserving _anything_, and if he was held a traitor, it was no more than what he deserved. But his heirs took the idea of preserving magic seriously, far more seriously than he ever did, and they have lived with the stigma of being Lumens from a traitorous line ever since, for the sake of 'preserving magic'—hardly a worthy cause, in my opinion. Why, Duke Octavian's son Ignatius was disinherited because he refused to become a pariah, and can you blame him?"

Joslyn remembered Ignatius's sister Julianna, strange and unfriendly and completely solitary except for her friendship with Fidelia. She had never approached anyone for friendship, had never seemed to want to be a part of the society she moved through, but when he thought about it, no one besides Fidelia had approached her, either. Joslyn himself certainly hadn't. Fidelia was the only person at school who seemed to think that Julianna was anyone worth knowing.

Julianna had made her own bed; that much was plain. She could have done the same as her brother and refused, and walked away from magic, but she didn't. (A quiet voice in Joslyn's head asked him if _he _could have walked away from his own duties, but it raised uncomfortable questions in his head, and he pushed it aside.) But still, facing social ostracism for the sake of duty could not be an easy thing to live with, especially when it was self-imposed. Joslyn couldn't blame Ignatius at all.

"But Ursul provides the crown with an invaluable service," Eleonora went on. "The line of Ursul has found itself responsible for training many a ruler of Nova in magic. Now, it happens as well that the ruler has had to train the new duke or duchess in magic—Duke Octavian is getting on in years; Julianna will likely learn her craft from Queen Ladesh. The line of Ursul are all pariahs, but they really do provide Nova an invaluable service. The ruler of Nova has a responsibility to defend Nova against all forms of magical threats. They can not do that unless they have been trained in a Lumen's craft, and it is Ursul who teaches them.

"And what do we do?"

Eleonora was looking at him expectantly, sitting ramrod straight in her armchair. Though they had often spoken in her sitting room and Joslyn had often been called upon to recall information in this room, it had never felt more like a classroom, and she had never seemed more like a professor giving him an exam. Hot sunlight poured in through the windows, and he could feel it burning the back of his neck. "We protect the artifacts collected by our ancestors, and the Lumen crystal of our house," Joslyn recited readily. "We keep them safe, but we also keep them secret, so that they won't fall into the wrong hands."

"And we keep them secret at all costs," Eleonora finished, nodding her head. "_That _is why the line of Caloris has not intermarried with the royal house since before the doomshadow." When she was met with an uncomprehending look Eleonora clicked her tongue impatiently. "Think about it, Joslyn. The ruler of Nova combats magical threats to the domain, and we possess items and knowledge that could potentially be very useful in that regard. The crown does not consult with us unless the threat is something coming out of Caloris or coming ashore from our coastline, and we do not usually learn about these threats until they've been resolved. But…" Her shoulders sagged, and she gave him a truly pitying look. "But what happens when the head of our house marries the ruler of Nova? Their duty to their house remains clear, but now it will come into conflict with their duty to Nova, and the crown.

"If you marry Fidelia, you will inevitably hear about some sort of magical threat threatening the domain. You—"

"—Will say nothing even if I knew something that might help, while she goes off to what could end up being her death," Joslyn supplied hollowly.

"Can you live with that?" Eleonora asked gravely, her gaze intent. "Can you?"

Joslyn didn't answer.

-0-0-0-

Elodie was such a sweet child.

Oh, certainly, she had her tantrums—she was only two, after all. She wasn't uniformly the sweet, happy child she was showing herself to be now, but at times like this, it was difficult to remember the tantrums she could throw when she was well and truly angered.

She ran through the narrow gaps and twisting curves of the gardens, Joslyn following as close behind as he could without tripping over something, be it bush or stone or fountain. This was how he spent much of his days. A royal consort had little practical power, especially the consort of a princess—there had been incidents in Nova's history where consorts took far more power than they should have, to no good end, and as a result, the people tended to be wary of anyone the ruler or heir married, watching for undue influence. Long story short, while Fidelia sat long in court with Ladesh and learned from her mother how to be Queen, Joslyn spent his days looking after their child.

Elodie didn't look much like him. She had Fidelia's pink hair, Fidelia's wide eyes, would probably have her soft features when she grew. The only feature Joslyn and Elodie seemed to have in common was eye color, and who knew how long that would last? Fidelia said that her eyes hadn't changed color to brown until she was three years old, and sometimes, Joslyn wondered why on earth he worried about this. He suspected that he didn't have enough to do.

His mother had come for a visit a few days ago; Elodie was her only granddaughter so far (_the only grandchild openly acknowledged_), and since Joslyn and Armand's father had died three months ago, leaving the latter in charge of Mazomba, Eleonora hadn't seen much of any of her family.

Eleonora had visited for a while when she first arrived, but after that had retired to the apartments she was staying in, emerging only at mealtimes; her hip bothered her, and she did not do a great deal of walking anymore. She doted on Elodie, and Elodie always seemed to enjoy her paternal grandmother's company. Joslyn supposed that he should take Elodie to visit her soon; it was already remiss of him not to have gone to visit his mother again after she first arrived. But he could not help but hold back.

"_Have you thought any more about what we discussed before you married the princess?"_

_Joslyn would have snapped that this was hardly an appropriate conversation to be having in front of Elodie, but she was safely distracted, sitting in a windowsill and staring down on the palace grounds, and Eleonora was giving him such a formidable look that those words caught in his throat. Instead, he shook his head. "No, Mother," he said shortly, not meeting her gaze._

_Eleonora pursed her lips. "I think you should."_

"_Mother, this isn't the time—"_

"_I mean it, Joslyn! It would be difficult enough to watch your wife put herself in danger while you stand aside. How would it be to watch your _daughter _do the same, and withhold knowledge that you know could help her? You can not afford to be of two minds about this!"_

Elodie turned on her heel and ran back towards him, her arms open wide. Joslyn dropped to his knees and Elodie threw her tiny arms around her neck. "Love you, Daddy!" she exclaimed brightly, giggling as Joslyn pulled her onto his lap and held her close.

Joslyn dipped his head and kissed her cheek, swallowing hard and trying to forget what his mother told him. "I love you, too. I love you so much."

-0-0-0-

"This is yours now. Do you understand?"

The room was stifling, though not from warmth. It felt as though it hadn't been aired out in months, as though the air had grown stale and rotten but he was the only one who noticed. The sweet, musty smell of illness and imminent death lingered around the bed in which she lied.

Eleonora was holding it out to him, a blue crystal surrounded by gold flower petals, the Lumen crystal that she had always called hers, and never bonded with.

Joslyn should have felt more than he did.

He knew that he should have been feeling more than he was now. There was she was, lying in bed, pale and frail and wasting away, so sure that she was dying that she had called him here to ensure that he would receive this, and the keys to the room beneath the estate. To look at her, it was plain that she was dying; there was no spare flesh betwixt skin and bone and her eyes had grown dull.

He should have felt more. He should have been weeping; that was the usual reaction when someone knew that they were about to lose their mother, wasn't it? But Joslyn did not weep. He did not shed tears. He did not sob, he did not rail against the gods and he did not smile and tell her that surely she was just exaggerating, surely she would get better. Numb, that was all he felt. There was a pervasive sense of unreality to all of this, and the sight of Eleonora holding out that which he had never imagined she would relinquish while still living just cemented the sense of unreality.

It was real, however, and Joslyn brought his hands up so that she could tip the crystal into them. It still felt the way it had all those years ago, the last time she had allowed him to hold it. It still pulsed in his hands like a living thing, such a small thing to be such an instrument of destruction.

"To keep safe," Eleonora murmured, drawing in wheezing, laborious breaths, "to keep secret, to keep away from prying eyes, to hold, but never to use. Promise me, my son."

Joslyn stared at her.

"Promise me," she repeated, more insistently this time, a modicum of her old strength returning to her voice. "Joslyn, promise me that."

He nodded. "I promise, Mother." Joslyn thought that his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, distant and far-away and tinny as though he was speaking through a pipe. It could just as easily have been someone else standing here.

She sank back against her pillows, and cast him a long, troubled look.

-0-0-0-

"Maybe you should stop for tonight."

"I'm alright. It's just…" Fidelia paused, rubbing her forehead and staring off into space, her bloodshot eyes drooping. "…Hard," she murmured, bowing her head and drawing a deep, shuddering breath.

"_The queen is dead. Long live the queen."_

Fidelia sat at her desk, holding what had once been Ladesh's crystal, now hers, in her hands. Joslyn hovered over her, looking at the crystal with nothing but ambivalence in his heart and looking at her with nothing but worry. The only light in the room was the candle burning at the desk, and the faint light given off by the crystal; all else was doused in shadow. In the gloom, her face seemed drawn and haggard, every line thrown into sharp relief. Her exhaustion was palpable.

After her mother died, Fidelia had in public shown what many referred to as an admirable degree of stoicism for one who had just found herself bereft of both her parents and thrust into the role of Queen. In private, Joslyn bore witness to something rather different.

The very first moment she had in private after being presented her mother's Lumen crystal, Fidelia had bonded with it. She had been trying to learn how to use magic on her own, based on the small bits of magic she had seen her mother perform over the years. But the problem was that all Fidelia knew of magic at all was the bits and pieces of magic that Queen Ladesh had sometimes performed for ceremonies. The problem was that Fidelia was also putting far more energy into this than was good for her.

Suddenly, Fidelia slumped in her chair, and Joslyn leaned forward to catch her shoulder so that she wouldn't fall out. "Oh, thanks," she mumbled, smiling wearily up at him. "I've just been so tired lately."

"I… know, Fidelia."

Fidelia straightened, smoothing down the front of her dress, something she often did when she was trying to stay alert. "Do you remember Julianna? Ah, the Duchess of Ursul, I mean. I've sent for her; she should be here in a week or so."

Joslyn grimaced. "Remember her? How could I forget her?" There was also only one reason Fidelia would be sending for Julianna so soon after her mother died, and frankly, that didn't make him any more eager to see her again.

"I know the two of you don't get along, but I need Julianna's help if I want to learn magic properly. And really, where else am I going to find a Lumen willing to openly acknowledge that she is one?"

Joslyn looked away.

"And I know that Julianna can be… _abrasive_," Fidelia went on, staring up at him earnestly. "But she is my friend." A firm note entered her voice. "She's had a hard life. Be polite."

"Of course," Joslyn said quietly.

Fidelia stared down at the pink crystal in her hands. It was different from Joslyn's mother's crystal (_No, _my _crystal now_), seemed so much more alive; just looking at it, Joslyn could imagine that Fidelia felt a pulse from the stone, but it also seemed to give off its own light, faint in the manner of a smoldering ember, not strong enough to do anything but throw dim beams of dancing light on the ceiling, and unless Joslyn was imagining it, he felt heat radiating off of it as well. It wasn't the heat of a bright, humid summer's day, but the heat of a fire crackling in the hearth come winter—gentle and welcome, rather than an imposition.

But Fidelia shook her head and muttered something under her breath, too faint for Joslyn to catch. Her crystal vanished, and she stood. "I think I will get some sleep."

Joslyn watched as she crossed the room and crawled under the blankets of their bed. She seemed to drop off to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and in sleep, her face showed itself as careworn and strained, more than she would have admitted to while awake.

It… It should not have been this way. Her feeling like that, isolated and in such great need to learn everything she could that she tried to learn even when she barely knew anything at all about magic. Joslyn had watched Fidelia attempt to perform spells, spells that her mother had performed with ease, but Fidelia could not even master the basics of. He watched her struggle, and fail, and try again, and inevitably fail. He had watched her scowl in frustration, and then inevitably break down crying, and nothing he said or did could make her stop.

It did not have to be this way. She did not have to bear that burden alone.

Joslyn bent over the desk and blew out the candle. He hoped that it was dark enough that she wouldn't be able to see the guiltily indecisive look on his face.

-0-0-0-

The last time Julianna of Ursul had come to the capital had been five years ago, when her father passed away and she needed to learn magic from Queen Ladesh. When she had come, she had kept to the apartments granted her except for when the Queen had spare time to train her. She did not like crowds, and did not like meeting new people; Joslyn remembered that much about Julianna from when they were in school together.

However, even reclusive Julianna had had to venture from her quarters at some point, and Joslyn had come across her at one point.

Elodie had been with him at the time, and at the sight of a person she'd not yet met, her eyes had lit up and she had tried to run down the hall to Julianna to say hello in her still-lisping voice. Or rather, she had tried.

Julianna had given her the strangest look, seeming to be caught between exasperation and fear. Without saying a single word, she had slipped out of the hallway and back into her apartments, leaving Elodie to stare at the door with a disbelieving expression on her small face.

Julianna hadn't changed a whole lot, in the past five years.

To be fair, she seemed a bit more poised, and a lot less likely to dive back into her rooms at the sight of a three-year-old girl. She did also seem marginally more able to keep from growing snappish at the slightest provocation. Not that she was any more sociable than she had been five years, nor any more likely to venture outside of her apartments without good reason. Whatever observation Joslyn had of her had to be obtained when he could manage it.

When Ladesh had trained Julianna, they either held their training in the chapel or in the yard outside of it when the weather was fair. Joslyn had never watched, either openly or clandestinely; it had seemed disrespectful at the time, and truth be told, he was still a little wary of Julianna, remembering her as he did from school and knowing that she was now a Lumen in truth. Julianna had decided to hold Fidelia's training in the same place, but this time, curiosity overcame concerns of whether it was respectful or not to watch. So he watched.

There was a duck pond within sight of the chapel yard. It was hardly uncommon for people to come feed the ducks, and though it was probably a bit of a stretch for anyone to claim that they were feeding the ducks for hours on end, that was what he did. Sat and watched, while Julianna taught her craft, and Fidelia slowly learned.

It was a cold autumn's day, but while Joslyn was bundled up in a warm cloak, Fidelia wore only a shawl over her clothes—she seemed not to feel the cold as she used to—and Julianna wore no coat, cloak, shawl, scarf, or anything at all that might have kept the cold away from her skin. Joslyn knew that, with enough training, Lumens could gain powers that had nothing to do with spell-casting and summoning; he wondered if increased tolerance for the cold was one of them.

At Julianna's command, Fidelia summoned a thick cloud of gray fog that enveloped the two women. For a few moments, Joslyn could see nothing through the cloud, and he stood up, concerned, but then…

Then, the air grew charged and tense, crackling as though a lightning storm had formed directly overhead. Joslyn stared into the depths of the cloud, transfixed, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. It quivered and shook, trying to maintain its shape, but then the ground shook and a great booming sound reverberated on the walls. A roaring wind ripped through the chapel yard and all across the great courtyard. The cloud was blown away (though the wind continued to roar and whip back and forth across the palace grounds), revealing the two women who had been enveloped within.

Julianna stood straight and tall, her hands on her hips. Fidelia was bent double, clutching her knees and gasping. Joslyn started over towards them, brow knitted, but stopped in his tracks when Julianna began to speak.

"I hope you aren't planning to enter into a duel with that move," Julianna remarked briskly, regarding her friend with a rather impatient look on her face. "You completely forgot to remove the air from where I was standing."

Joslyn frowned darkly at Julianna (_Isn't it obvious that she's exhausted? Do you really have to do that now?_), starting to head back over towards the chapel, but before he could say anything, Fidelia waved a hand at Julianna and straightened. Her face was bathed in sweat and she was listing from side to side, but she had a determined look on her face as she said, "I can try again. Let's try again, Julianna," she insisted.

"Fidelia…" Joslyn stared at her, astonished that she would be insisting on this when she had to feel ready to collapse; she certainly looked ready to collapse.

At that, the two women directed their stares towards him, becoming aware of Joslyn's presence for the first time. The wind whipped Fidelia's loose hair across her face, as she smiled and began to lurch even more as she waved to him. "I thought that might get your attention, Joslyn!" she called out over the wind. "Julianna and I are about to have another go of it! Do you want to watch?" She laughed, but her laughter sounded breathless and false.

What Joslyn _wanted _was to be able to be able to call a halt to all of this and actually have even the remotest chance of either of them listening to him. What he _wanted _was for Fidelia not to look the way she did—tottering on her feet, gasping, covered in sweat and putting up a brave face over her exhaustion. _This _was what magic did to people, what it would keep doing to her if she kept this up.

Julianna seemed to realize at last just how exhausted Fidelia was. She stared at her old friend, a look of alarm growing in her eyes. "…It was good for a first try, Fidelia," she said, raising her eyebrows as she looked her Queen up and down. "…Maybe we should just go back to your sensory lessons for the rest of today."

Fidelia's shoulders sagged, and Joslyn closed the distance between them to put an arm around his wife's waist so she wouldn't fall. "If… you say so," Fidelia replied uncertainly, brow drawing up.

Julianna nodded firmly. "I do. You shouldn't rush this, Fidelia, you really—"

"Mommy! Daddy!"

They were all distracted by that high, excited cry. Joslyn and Fidelia both looked around and saw Elodie running towards them with a huge grin on her face. Joslyn winced, remembering that this was about the time that Elodie's lessons usually finished up in the afternoons. Would she notice how exhausted Fidelia was? Would she ask?

As it happened, no, she wouldn't, at least partly because Fidelia was determined not to let Elodie see her weariness. She slid away from Joslyn, dropping to her knees and holding her arms wide, so Elodie could barrel into her without any obstacles. "Hello, darling," she greeted her daughter warmly. "How was your day?"

Joslyn was distracted from all this by the sound of Julianna clearing her throat. While she did not have the expression of warring exasperation and fear that she had worn five years ago, the last time she was in such close proximity with Elodie, neither did she seem entirely comfortable around Joslyn and Fidelia's daughter. "I must take my leave," she said simply. "Good day, Fidelia. Princess."

Julianna and Joslyn looked at one another, Joslyn almost wishing that he could look away—her gaze was piercing, more so than he liked. "Good day," she murmured, and left. Joslyn said nothing in response.

The wind was still blisteringly sharp as it whistled across the grounds. Either Julianna's magic had yet to dissipate, or whatever she had done to dispel the cloud Fidelia summoned had triggered this, or it was the result of Julianna and Fidelia's magic interacting. Joslyn wondered if tomorrow they would find someone dead with a living shadow sliding off the corpse's throat, or if in the morning there would be a white cat with glass eyes lingering outside his and Fidelia's bedchamber door, only to vanish when the sunlight hit it. He looked at Elodie, and reminded himself to check the shadows once night fell.

-0-0-0-

"You know the Tombulans are massing at the border; I have to do _something _about it!"

"So you plan to summon storms? Wouldn't it be less hassle just to station troops in Ursul and Kigal?"

Fidelia shook her head vigorously. Joslyn leaned over her shoulder to peer at the reports, and felt his heart sink. _Two thousand Tombulan soldiers? That's not just establishing a military presence in that region of their domain; that's an invasion force. We will have to do something about it, but what she suggests…_

_I'm glad Elodie's still in school; she's insulated from all of this. How it would frighten her if she knew._

"I thought about sending soldiers north," Fidelia admitted, rubbing her forehead wearily, "but I don't think it would work. We need to frighten them off, not merely send a message that we're watching. The Tombulans are notoriously superstitious. A freak storm appearing out of nowhere, they would chalk that up as a Lumen's work." She smiled, twirling her quill in her hands. "And they would be right."

Joslyn bit back a sigh and took a seat in the chair next to hers. "But if the Tombulans really do mean to invade, the moment they realize that you have set up camp near the border, they'll try to kill you! And just how many 'freak storms' is it going to take to scare them off?"

Fidelia glared at him. "Joslyn, do you really think that I would go so close to a hostile army without ensuring that I would be protected? I _am _taking some of the troops with me, even if they aren't staying there on a permanent basis. I will eventually die as all must, but I'd rather not do so stupidly.

"And as for the storms…" Fidelia shrugged, the irritation bleeding out of her face. "It will take a while. It will take a great deal of magic, and I probably won't be able to stop at just one storm. Nations that have set their sight on invading their neighbors aren't going to back down because of just one squall." She smiled ruefully. "And just one freak squall isn't going to be enough to convince them of a Lumen's hand in this."

He stared at her, feeling his stomach knot in the beginnings of dread. "Fidelia… You said that using magic tires you. I've _seen _it tire you. How exhausting would raising multiple storms be?"

She waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about me. Since the Tombulans are massing near Ursul, I've asked Julianna to help me, and she's accepted. Julianna's a powerful Lumen; between the two of us, we should have no trouble. I will be fine."

_So you say. And the Duchess is at best unlikely to talk you out of doing anything that might cause you harm. _Joslyn clenched his teeth. _Damn it, Fidelia, she may be your friend, but she'd let you burn if she thought it would save Nova. The line of Ursul has been taught for two hundred years to put the good of Nova above all else, and that includes the crown. _His crystal shifted in his pocket, and he said none of this aloud. Joslyn suspected he would be struck by lightning for a hypocrite if he did.

"I can't talk you out of this?" he said instead, sucking in a deep breath, telling himself to be calm.

"No," Fidelia replied immediately. "No, you can not. I am the Queen. I must address every threat to my domain, and this is the best way to address the threat of the Tombulans. And you need to stay here," she went on, seeming to sense Joslyn's next request. "At least one of us has to stay here in case of a crisis—well, _another _crisis, anyways." She smiled again, bright and confident, refusing to acknowledge the risks she was taking. "I will be fine, Joslyn."

As was often the case, Joslyn said nothing in response.

-0-0-0-

When she was gone, riding north towards Ursul, Joslyn sat on the edge of their bed, holding his crystal in his hands and staring intently down at it.

_I swore never to use it. And even if I did, even if I did bond with this crystal, what could I do? It took Fidelia nearly a year to master magic; what could I learn and master in the space of a few days that could help her and Julianna drive back the Tombulans?_

_I swore never to use it._

_We keep things of magic safe, and secret. That is what I swore. To keep it safe, keep it secret at all costs, and never, ever use it. But I could help her. Even as a newborn Lumen with barely any knowledge of magic, I could help her. Even if it was only to take some of the burden off of her, I could help her, if I was willing to break the oath I swore to my mother, the oaths of my line._

Joslyn sighed heavily.

"_You can not afford to be of two minds about this!"_

Eleonora was right, regardless of whether she was referring to Elodie or Fidelia. And yet he was of two minds, still. Joslyn stowed the crystal away in his pocket, did not bond with it, and told himself that all would be well.

-0-0-0-

Fidelia came home so weak and drained that she couldn't walk without exhausting herself for a week. But the Tombulans had been driven out by two successive weeks of terrible storms, and Fidelia recovered in time. She remained worryingly pale, her skin thin and papery-looking. Elodie came home for winter break and immediately noticed the change, staring at her mother with huge eyes. Fidelia told Elodie that she had been ill, but that she was getting better now, and Elodie seemed to believe her, but Joslyn couldn't be so optimistic.

No, he couldn't be as optimistic as Fidelia, nor as willing to believe in her optimism as Elodie. Something else would happen. Eventually, something else would happen. Magic always had a price. Before, Joslyn had focused primarily on the threats raised by magic, such as the keythong and the kraken and the doomshadow. He had thought of the fate of Borealis, and thought that to be magic's price. But Fidelia, while she had recovered, would never be as strong as she had once been. She would never have the vitality she had had when Joslyn had first met her. She would remain as she was now—her skin paper-thin and translucent, her hair brittle, her appetite poor, her eyes not quite as bright as they had been.

And still, he was plagued by the question of what could be, if he cast off the oath he had made, and helped her. Truly, at what point did secret-keeping become treason? When he was watching his wife, his Queen, risk her life and her health using terrible magic to keep the domain safe? When he watched and said nothing, and stood by, knowing things that could help her, knowing that there was something he could do that would help her if ever she had the need to use her magic again?

At what point did secret-keeping become not only treasonous, but inexcusable?

When he stood by and said nothing, and let her kill herself protecting the realm?

The second time the Tombulans began massing at the border, and Fidelia went out to stop them, she did not recover.

She came home so weak that she could not even stand, had to be carried to the priestesses and the healers, had to be carried to her bed, where she stayed, and did not rise from again.

Fidelia was lucid, at least. She was able to greet visitors, which was a good thing when Laurent, Lucille and their children came to stay with her "until she got better", as Lucille put it. She was so certain that Fidelia would recover that, for a day or so, Joslyn was able to fool himself into believing the same.

"I… I am very tired."

"…I know, Fidelia."

All the curtains had been thrown open, to let as much light into the room as possible, and yet somehow, the room seemed to Joslyn's eyes dim and gray. The sound of her labored, rattling breaths filled his ears, echoed on the walls like waves crashing on the cliffs in southern Caloris. Her hand was cold and limp; Fidelia was left unable even to curl her fingers around his.

"I would like to sleep," Fidelia whispered, casting her eyes this way and that, everywhere in the room, the walls, the bed hangings, the windows, as though looking for some secret threat, as though expecting the shadows congregating in the musty corners of the room to rise up against her. "I would like that. It's quiet when I sleep."

"I know, Fidelia." Joslyn could barely hear his own voice over the pounding of his heart.

"You'll look after Elodie, won't you?" she asked, a pleading note in her faint voice. "She's so young…"

"I will, Fidelia, of course I will. I…" Joslyn sucked in a deep breath. It was getting harder all the time to swallow without gasping. Why was this happening, why did it have to happen to her, why was he so helpless to do anything but watch her slip further away with each passing hour? And why, _why _hadn't he done anything to try and stop this, when he knew that it would happen if Fidelia continued to walk down the road she had chosen? "I… I'm _sorry_," he choked out.

Finally, she looked at him. Fidelia smiled weakly, and asked, "For what?"

-0-0-0-

Later in the afternoon, Queen Fidelia passed into a sleep none could waken her from. In the early hours of the morning, she drew her last breath, her husband at her side, barely seeming aware of his surroundings as the healers confirmed her death and the high priestess performed the death ritual, purifying her body so that it could be buried without disturbing her spirit.

The queen was dead. Long live the queen.

-0-0-0-

_In certain futures, under certain circumstances, when Elodie agreed to duel an invading king, Joslyn stepped up in her place. He broke the vow of his mother, his forebears, the vow he had made when he was a child, and had always abided by, and became the first of the line of Caloris to bond with their crystal and become a Lumen in two hundred years._

_He could not stand by anymore._

_He could not stand by and watch his daughter, who was not even a Lumen, knew nothing of magic and had no chance at all of surviving the duel against this invader, be killed. Joslyn had stood by and watched Fidelia die. He had blamed Lumens, blamed their magic, because it was convenient for him to do so, because it distracted him from thoughts of his own guilt, of how he had stood by and said nothing. He knew that he could have made a difference, that if he had chosen differently, what he did could have been enough to keep Fidelia from dying. But he didn't._

_Joslyn would not stand by and watch Elodie be killed, the way he had stood by and watched Fidelia die, letting secrets run to treason and inexcusable neglect. Elodie was his daughter. She meant more to him than any vow. _

_It was said that the first Lumen could perform magic immediately after creating her crystal and bonding with it. The stardust she had crafted her crystal with gave her wisdom and insight that let her see the depth and breadth of magic without any teaching. Joslyn could only hope that it would be the same with him.  
_


End file.
